Hospitals often receive medicine in bulk containers for sake of economy. This medicine is often repackaged in various ways according to particular medicine involved and the requirements of the patient.
One conventional system packages the medicine in a pill strip. A machine for making these pill strips is made by Sanyo Corporation of Japan and is sold in the United States under the trademark ATC 212. The pill strip is essentially a length of plastic folded over and sealed to create a series of individual pill packets. One advantage of this system is that the individual pill packets can be uniquely identified as to contents, patient, mode and time of administration of the medicine. However, the storage and dispensing of these pill strips has remained a problem.